


Seashell Songs

by bunn



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Eucatastrophe, Gen, Middle Earth, Oath of Fëanor, Second Age, Silmarils
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 17:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13862325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunn/pseuds/bunn
Summary: A few scenes of Maglor after the death of Maedhros, written for B2MEM 2018.Maglor threw the Silmaril into the Sea, but that wasn't the end of it.  Maglor makes soup, counts spoons, makes songs and finds a way.





	Seashell Songs

Prompts 1: **"I have passed through fire and deep water, since we parted."** **“The wind began to blow steadily out of the West and pour the water of the distant seas on the dark heads of the hills in fine drenching rain.”**   
  


#  The Tombless Sea

 

The sky was a dark leaden grey in the distance, and the sea echoed its darkness, lacy white foam moving endlessly across the grey waves washing on black rocks that were sharp and newly-fractured at the edges.  A thin rain was falling, almost more mist than rain, blowing in the seawind and making faint grey shapes against the black ocean: riders, horses, ships, banners showed themselves for a brief moment, then faded again into the wind.

Maglor sat on a wet black rock and shivered, staring at the waves as at an enemy.  They were calling him.   _ Silmaril _ , they whispered, endlessly, hushing on the rocks and the black sharp-edged gravel of the shoreline.  _ Silmaril, silmaril _ . 

He could not see it from where he sat.  There was no light that shone out of a kinder past glowing from the waves, for he had learned by now that if it was hidden in the leather bag before he threw it into the waves, it was easier to ignore it, sometimes for days on end.

The ocean was an enemy. If the ocean were a friend, it would have drowned him by now, but it would not.  He knew why, too. Uinen, Lady of the Seas, would not show herself, but her long hair ran through the waves.  She had not forgotten Alqualondë, for all that her rage had turned cold now, and very bitter.

He could hear another voice too, plucking at the very edge of his mind from far away, calling him by name.   For a brief, shameful moment, he let it pull at him, let himself think, would it be so terrible if he answered?  What could Elrond possibly say to him that would be worse than this?

But that was not, after all, the point. Whatever Elrond had to say, Maglor could certainly not speak with him.  If there were two people above all that he must not allow himself to come near, they were Eärendil’s children. He pulled his mind more firmly closed with a great effort, and set barriers across it like walls of granite.

_ Silmaril, silmaril, silmaril _ , cried the waves, and Maglor dug his nails into the red flesh of his burned right hand, and sang, so that he could not hear them.  

 

* * *

**Prompt 2: There he wandered long in a dream of music that turned into running water, and then suddenly into a voice.**   
  


#  A Little Freedom

 

The leather bag, neatly stitched and marked with the star of his house, was black and stiff, slimy to the touch now but it still held together, for it had been made with skill and care.  He pulled it from the coarse pale sand of the seafloor — it always came to rest there, so he could see it clearly —  and he swam back towards the light, bursting into cold daylight and taking a breath as his hair clung around his face.  

The waves pushed him back to shore, wanting nothing to do with him, and he stumbled from the foam, falling to his knees and pulling the bag open greedily, giving in one more time. 

It shone brilliantly, colours of gold and silver out of childhood long lost, and he could not hold himself back from touching it for a moment, though he knew that it would burn him, and it did.  The light of everything that he had known and loved would not endure his touch, for he had chosen darkness many times over.

He knelt there for a long while, wide-eyed in silence, enspelled by the Oath that bound him to the condemning light. 

His body reminded him that the gravel beneath his knees was sharp, the wind was cold, his hand ached and his stomach was empty. He ignored it at first, but it protested more sharply as the grey light in the sky began to fade, and he found himself shaking. Eventually he pulled himself away, got up stiffly, stretched  and pulled his more or less dry cloak around him. 

He left the gem lying on the rock where he could see it from the corner of his eye. 

  
There was little food to be found along the shoreline that had until recently been the east-border of Beleriand.  Celegorm would have found something easily enough, of course, but Celegorm was buried in a shallow grave scratched into the iron-hard midwinter soil outside Menegroth, out there somewhere beneath the Sea. But where the fires that had blazed from the rocks had guttered and died leaving only black ash, willowherb had sprung up, blushing tall and fair, coming down almost to the shoreline, and wild carrots followed.  Amrod had told him that you could eat the willowherb, and how to tell wild carrots from the hemlock... 

Maglor pulled up roots one-handed, keeping half an eye on the Silmaril as he did it. He had dazzled the Oath into silence with light for now, and so he could glance at it sideways and not be caught.   

He washed the roots in seawater, added a few small mussels and handfuls of a delicate green seaweed to the pan that had been in the pack that Maedhros had abandoned on the rock, and climbed back up with them to the Silmaril to make a fire.  Maedhros had carried more gear than he, since Maglor had the harp to carry... The willowherb made good kindling: Amrod had showed him that, too. 

It was easier when the Silmaril was in the ocean.  When the gem was there beside him, the Oath pushed at him to look at it, to wonder if it was safe, to think dark thoughts of what he might do to anyone who came to take it from him.  But he could not bear to leave it in the Sea for long either.

“I should have thrown you into the fires before they went cold,” he told it bitterly, though he knew that was not something he could do. Not after Dagor Bragollach, and the rivers of fire that had taken so many friends and allies, not after Glaurung blazing in fury at Nirnaeth Arnoediad, after Ancalagon the Black belching flame across the sky. 

Perhaps the Silmaril knew it too: at any rate it did not reply.  It never did. He was not sure if he wanted it to reply in his father’s voice, or if he was afraid that if it did, it would speak of Eldar and of Aftercomers who had taken  in hand a Silmaril.   

Probably he should have taken the path that Maedhros had taken, whether that path led to the Halls of Awaiting or to the Everlasting Darkness to which they had pledged themselves. But that was not something he had been able to bring himself to do either.  The treacherous voice of hope would not let him, and anyway it was Maedhros who was the brave one.  Maedhros and Celegorm and Caranthir, and Maglor standing next to them, pretending that he was brave, too.  If he had been brave, he would have stood with Maedhros at Losgar.  But probably that would not have changed anything.

The clouds were clearing at last into the west, leaving a faint red afterglow of the vanished sunset, and stars appearing. The evening star shone in the west, echoing the light of the Silmaril. It was distant now, impossible to pick out as the ship that had slain the greatest of the Winged Dragons.  Gil-Estel they had called it when first they saw it, the Star of High Hope, and that hope had proved true for almost everyone. 

“It  _ was _ a true hope, really,” Maglor said to Eärendil, taking a sip of thin hot salty mussel soup.  “Our Enemy fell, and that was supposed to be the point.  I would be honestly happy to consider you one of Fëanor’s kin and entitled to the thing that way. I suppose it’s too much to expect that you should feel the same.”  

Eärendil, high in the western sky, made no answer. He was probably busy with more important matters than conversation with a lost and wandering distant cousin who had been declared an enemy both by his acts and by his Silmaril. 

“No?” Maglor said.  “Ah well. I don’t suppose my father would either.”  He scooped a mussel from the pan.  Maedhros had packed three spoons, and he wondered again if that meant that Maedhros had not planned his death all along, and who the third spoon had been for: Fingon, or their father.  Or perhaps it was just a spare spoon. 

The soup was finished: enough to silence the protests of his body for a little while, and so he cautiously pulled the harp from its leather cover with his left hand.  He had touched the Silmaril with two fingertips this time, like a fool. Fingertip burns were the worst kind.  

He turned his back upon the Silmaril, settled the harp on his knee, balanced it carefully in the crook of his right arm, well away from his aching hand, and began to play one-handed, thoughtlessly, wandering into a dream made of music as he let the notes spill out unplanned and fall like golden light of Laurelin through rain, down to the endlessly surging sea.  

* * *

 

#  Sing a New Song

**Prompts: And the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.   .... Love will find out the way.**

  
Maglor did not have much time for composition, now, what with finding food and driftwood for the fire, and attending to Oath and Silmaril.  

But three winters had drifted past and been lost in the cold sea-wind and the crying of the gulls, and somehow he had found time here and there for six new songs: each one a lament.  One for Amras, one for Amrod, one for Curufin.  One for Caranthir, one for Celegorm, and at last, and very reluctantly, one for Maedhros. 

It had been some time since he had made a lament. More recently he had made songs to please the children, then when that time had passed, there had been little leisure for composition: he had played old songs instead of making new ones, set thought aside to return to later, and kept on fighting.

Caranthir’s was easiest, for Caranthir had fallen in Doriath, trying to come to the rescue of his brothers. Caranthir’s tale was so very nearly the tale of a hero.  At Alqualondë, Caranthir had followed Maglor and he had guarded Maglor’s back, and there might be reproach in that for Maglor, but surely there was not much for his younger brother. 

Caranthir might even have touched a Silmaril and not been burned. 

But Maedhros... Maedhros was hardest.  Hardest because his death was near and painful, hardest too because Maedhros had led them.  Maedhros had touched a Silmaril and he like Maglor had been burned. There was no question of Maedhros’s guilt, for the Silmaril was judge and witness to it, and Maedhros himself had confirmed the judgement. 

If he had only stood by Maedhros before the fire went up at Losgar... if he had turned away from the fire there, and disobeyed their father,  would Maedhros have turned from the fire in turn, and stayed with him, there at the end?  

If he had said to Maedhros before the Havens, as Maedhros had said at Losgar : No!

No way to know. 

If Maglor had spoken for Fingon to his father.  Or if it had been Maglor who had come to Maedhros on the mountain.

“Probably not,” Maglor said, to a seagull on the shore, as he looked out across waves green with spring sunlight, not thinking at all of where the Silmaril had fallen, but definitely only of a lament for Maedhros, and of conversation with a seagull. “I never could have scaled Thangorodrim.  I’m not a hero, not like Fingon, and even if I had, the Eagle never would have come for me.” 

The seagull regarded him from the rock, head cocked a little and its bright unsympathetic eyes staring. 

“He wasn’t well, you know,” Maglor told it. “Otherwise he would never have given up.  Not Maedhros.  He never gave up, not until the very end.” 

And that was true, but not quite the whole story, because Maedhros had not been well, for all that he had come back from Thangorodrim as fierce and deadly as a storm from the mountains. The shadow of pain had lain upon him.  It had grown darker since the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and Maglor had known it. 

Yet Maglor had followed him every step, and obeyed every command, because Maedhros was his elder brother and his lord, but also because if it had not been Maedhros to take the burden, it would have to be him. 

He did not make a lament for himself. It would be ridiculous to do that. 

 

******

 

The Silmaril shone gold and silver against the glittering Sea.  He had managed not to touch it this time, but only shake it from the bag onto the rock, and though the light ran through him, calling an answering darkness from his mind that held him unmoving, the Sun shone upon his back and warmed his bare feet. His clothes were almost dry already.

The Sea was almost still, only the smallest waves lapping against the rocks, and high overhead he could hear a raven calling harshly, though he could not quite look up to see it circle against the pale blue sky. 

Somewhere in the distance out at sea, seabirds were calling, only a few at first, and then more and more, a harsh screaming that reminded him of Alqualondë, of the Havens of Sirion. Within his mind, cold-scaled darkness turned at the memory and pulled him deeper. 

He ducked away from the thought of blood upon the quays of Sirion, and tried to pick a music from the cries of gulls instead. One could weave the sound of flutes through the cries of gulls...

The sound was getting louder, and now it was all around him, as if every bird in Middle-earth was gathering at the water-side and calling out.  He blinked and pulled away from the Silmaril to look up at tiny delicate wings silhouetted in sunlight against the sky. 

Something was happening. He got up, looked around and could see nothing but the birds, and yet there was a sense of awaiting, as if an orchestra had gathered and were waiting for their moment to play.  

The air smelled of change and the birdsong rang out, and then it came.  A shift in the making of the world, as if a great note filled with sorrow and with joy never heard before was being sung, and the birds cried out in answer.  

Maglor sang too, wordlessly, without understanding, and then he heard the rumbling in the North, as, almost out of sight, the last remnants of the Anfauglith, of fallen Thangorodrim and the ruins of Angband crumbled at last into the sea. 

The water hushed, and ran smoothly up the rocks, and then fell back to the usual mid-tide place, and the birds that had gathered upon the shore scattered. 

“What  _ was _ that?” Maglor said, and laughed, not so much because there was anything to laugh at, as because his heart was strangely light.

“The Enemy is gone,” a croaking voice said, and looking around, he saw that the raven that he had heard high overhead had alighted on a spur of rock. Automatically he stepped between it and the Silmaril. 

“What do you mean, he’s gone? The Enemy is one of the Valar.  He can’t be killed,” Maglor told it. “He was defeated and chained after Thangorodrim was broken. He is a prisoner of Mandos, as he was before. What more is there to do with him?”

“Well, hark at you, the expert on the Ainur,” the Raven said, looking very unimpressed and scratching at the feathers just above its beak with one foot. 

“Very well then, master Raven,” Maglor said and smiled.  “I am a mere foolish elf with no wisdom to match yours, it seems. Will you enlighten me?” 

“The Valar have thrust him through the Doors of Night, beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void,” the Raven croaked, rather smugly, Maglor thought. 

“They can do that?” Maglor stared, astonished. 

“They have done it.” the Raven said, and put its head on one side, looking at the Silmaril.  Maglor drew his sword left-handed, and made an emphatic shooing gesture with the right. 

“Oh, very well!” it said, crossly, and took off, flying slow-winged, croaking in annoyance,  up the cliffs and vanished into the hills behind. 

Maglor looked back at the Silmaril, out of habit.  The darkness in his mind stirred in answer, but it stirred, he thought, a little sluggishly.  

Interesting, that. 

He closed his eyes for a moment to cut out the light, and thought of the note that was something entirely new and strange, that had rung out across the Sea. Behind his eyes, the Oath answered, dropping its dark scaled head a little, as if exhausted.  It did not grip so hard, in fact, if he did not look at it and thought only of music, he could almost pretend it was not there, as he had done for so many years in Beleriand. 

_ More  _ than interesting. Hope that had betrayed him so very many times before stirred, and without having to open his eyes to find it, he picked up the harp. 

*******

He had sung for long years now, waking and sleeping, pausing only to eat when he must, humming under his breath on the rare occasion that someone should pass by.  

Below him, the sea washed upon beaches that had been sharp with broken stone and now were smooth and shining bright with fine sand, and on rocks that were smooth now, curved and gentle and pitted by long years of waves.  The coast had shifted, trees and grass and winter storms working upon it as his mother worked marble, and great dunes of sand had formed, offering a shelter from the sea-winds where sweet dewberries scrambled across the sand, and rabbits burrowed. 

Probably the leather bag around the Silmaril had entirely rotted in the salt by now. It might be buried under sand and rockfall, or carried off by seals or by Uinen herself perhaps. 

He did not know.  He had not looked.  

There was nothing shining in his mind but music, nothing moving in the darkness but dreams of blood upon the quays of Sirion. The shadows in his mind were full of grief, but not of evil. 

Hoofbeats on the shore, and a faint suggestion of distant thought calling through the harpsong in a voice out of very long ago.  He moved, unthinking, to shut it out.  

Then he paused, for there was a sorrow in it that was sharp and aching, and it was calling his name. 

Why should Elrond be so possessed with grief?  Why should he ride the coast like a thunderstorm, calling out like that?  

Where was Elros?

He meant to duck behind the gorse-bushes.  He meant to close his mind and hush his voice so that even Elrond’s clear sight would pass him by.  That would be the right thing to do.  Elrond must have more than enough friends to turn to: Gil-galad, Círdan, Galadriel, Celebrimbor, Elves of Doriath and Gondolin. It was bad enough that he had begun his life in war, without Maglor standing as a grim reminder of the fallen Shadow. 

But his fingers on the harp kept on playing, a wordless music shaped and worn by the sea, and now Elrond was coming through the bushes, along the faint winding path that led into the dunes. Maglor looked up, feeling suddenly wary as a wild thing caught outside its burrow, and met his eyes. 

And the grief written on Elrond’s face lifted and a sudden surprised smile shone there like sunlight dancing on the Sea. 

**Author's Note:**

> This work inspired [Songs of the Sea by raiyana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848345) in which Uinen observes Maglor, and fails to manage to hate him.


End file.
